If you claim to be a California liberal, you need to vote Yes on Prop 22

Let’s start with a quick disclaimer before someone’s first retort is that I’m biased — sure, I probably am. I worked at Uber from February 2013 to June 2017, and I’m an Uber shareholder. But, I also quit my job at Uber after Trump got elected to fight back and work in politics full-time, serving as COO of Resistance Labs, a political organization focused on electing Democrats in red and rural areas. I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, the classic blue bubble in a sea of red that’s been called more liberal than Berkeley. So: I get it. I understand that need to maintain one’s liberal identity; your gut tells you to fight for the underdog, to be skeptical of corporations, funneling millions of dollars into a ballot initiative must mean it’s suspect. It’s uncomfortable to think about.

I’m asking you to step back from the emotional ties of what you think you should believe, and instead look very pragmatically at the tangible impact of what failing to vote Yes on Prop 22 would mean. If Prop 22 fails, it not only creates a dangerous precedent that hinders innovation, but also imposes value judgments on the ways people elect to generate income, crushes economic opportunities for Californians, and ultimately causes numerous negative externalities by increasing the existing rich-poor gap with the necessity to increase prices.

The Failure of Generalizing Drivers

But first, I want to share a bit more on a softer topic that is sorely missing from most of the conversations about Prop 22. Who really are drivers, individually as people? We’re consistently talking about a population of drivers as a whole, bucketing them as a separate entity and making sweeping generalizations and assumptions that all drivers want to work full-time and have Uber as their primary source of income. In fact, independent surveys report that 80% of drivers work less than 20 hours per week. Those citing the UC Santa Cruz study indicating that most drivers are working full-time ignore that the sample is limited purely to a subset of drivers in the San Francisco area as opposed to a more representative sample from the entire state.

Advocates of No on Prop 22 fail to see the driver community for what it is — a diverse and vibrant group of people spanning all ages, hailing from around the world, all with a unique story and reason for why they drive. In the tens of thousands of rides I’ve taken over the past decade, what continues to make an impression on me is what I learn from my conversations with drivers. I have the opportunity to connect with such interesting people who I may ordinarily never meet and learn about their experiences, their motivations, their stories — in just a 15 minute ride.

And while of course there are numerous professional drivers and people using Uber to make a full-time living, the beauty of Uber’s current model and the gig economy as a whole is that it enables people to use driving as a means to fulfill something else they’re seeking beyond purely money. Being able to have the flexibility to be an independent contractor and drive how long you want when you want means we can expand the community to include:

• The young immigrant who has recently come to the United States and is taking classes full-time, but enjoys driving a few hours every week to practice English and learn about American culture
• The dad who is spending the day wrangling his kids to focus on Zoom school, and finds respite in spending an hour a day getting out of the house and driving his favorite car
• The woman who lost her friend in a drunk driving incident and spends Friday nights ensuring that others can get home safe
• The deaf man who wants to make extra money for a splurge vacation, and appreciates the deaf driver features available in-app
• The widowed and retired older gentleman who is lonely and finds joy driving for several hours during the day to socially connect with others
• The young woman who is starting her own company and wants to pick up a few extra bucks while pitching others on her business idea

While this is just a sampling of the type of people you might find driving, it’s far from an extensive list. More and more people are wanting the flexibility to do ridesharing for their own reasons.

How You Work Isn’t How Everyone Works

Philosophically, one of the things that pains me the most about the No on Prop 22 arguments is that they’re imposing a value judgment on what work should be and what people should want. Not everyone wants to be a full-time employee. Not everyone wants to work a traditional 9–5 job, or finds personal fulfillment and job satisfaction by upholding that societal norm. Many people don’t want the restrictions of a schedule, being told what to do and when, and having limited time to pursue other passions. The reason the gig economy flourished is because people found it an attractive opportunity. If they don’t find that the opportunity meets their needs, they can simply stop driving or doing deliveries.

If you can let the former high school policy debater in me engage in a bit of philosophical hyperbole as a means of academic discourse…in many ways a vote No on Prop 22 is propagating a colonialist mentality that is at odds with core liberal beliefs. If you’ll go along on this idea with me briefly as a thought experiment, the data shows that most drivers don’t want to be full-time employees. No on Prop 22 is making an assertion on behalf of others with the idea that, despite the majority not wanting to be classified as employees, they must be wrong and not know what is best for their self-interest — they must be protected and don’t actually know what they should want.

I appreciate the above might be met with backlash, but I share it as a way to hopefully open your thought process deeper and think about another angle when evaluating policy. I majored in a program called Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE), which provides three lenses to approach policy making — too often I see people shy away from engaging in potentially uncomfortable philosophical debates outside the confines of academia.

But bringing ourselves back to the more concrete, I again emphasize — if the people who this actually impacts know what they want, why aren’t we listening to them?

Crushing Economic Opportunities When Californians Need Them Most

Our country has been decimated by President Trump’s horrific inaction and lack of leadership around COVID-19. We saw the service industry collapse overnight, with shut-downs causing the norm to be that you were laid off. And even with gradual safe re-openings, we know that recovery will be slow. Restaurants have shuttered permanently, and those that have survived, will be struggling to stay open by operating at limited capacity that yields razor-thin margins.

San Francisco led the country in its thoughtful, science-backed, and swift shelter in place measures. And what was included in the initial designation of essential services, services deemed critical to keeping our communities safe and functional? Ridesharing and food delivery.

In a scary and uncertain time, the stability of companies like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and Instacart meant that people could swiftly and easily transition to finding additional ways of economic relief. Perhaps only for a few hours a week to supplement their stimulus check, perhaps wanting something temporary while awaiting how the world would change and when they may be able to return to work. But because of the ability to have independent contractors, these companies provided an economic cushion that people could easily turn to if they needed.

Perhaps of even greater concern is how No on Prop 22 would mean that the countless number of people who already rely on the gig economy would suddenly be kicked off the app and lose an income stream. One million Californians work as independent contractors across rideshare and food delivery platforms. This is also about stability — now is the time when we need to be ensuring that people continue to have access to economic opportunities, especially those that they’re currently relying on.

Price Increases Hurt Those That Need Uber Most

If Prop 22 fails, services like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and Instacart won’t shut down. They’ll just increase prices drastically, probably need additional service fees, and ultimately will pass a lot of these costs along to the consumer. And, a lot of people will pay.

Arriving back at SFO at 11pm from an international flight, jet lagged and toting numerous bags? As a woman I wouldn’t even give BART a second thought from a safety perspective in this scenario — a $120 uberX it is. COVID-19 spikes again and we have a second tightening of shelter in place? Sure, I’ll pay an extra $30 service fee for Instacart. Meeting up with a friend in DTLA when I’m in Santa Monica? I’ll take that $75 Uber each way, I wouldn’t risk drunk driving and traversing the LA freeways at night.

I have the financial luxury to make those decisions. Most people don’t. It’s undeniable that services like Uber and Lyft have had a drastic impact on improving the safety of our communities. From reducing drunk driving numbers by staggering percentages across the country to having in-app safety measures and 24/7 customer support, ridesharing continues to define and reinvent the best standards to help our communities move safely. Most people though are going to need to take the unsafe option, the riskier option — the option that saves them money, because safety is now expensive.

I’ve also seen numerous stories of people who are disabled in some way fearing price increases. Uber for example offers options to request wheel-chair accessible vehicles, enabling people to have an additional means of freedom especially when traveling. Necessary price increases would make this a less easy option for people.

And there are countless more stories from individual riders about their unique circumstances and how being able to incorporate services like Uber or DoorDash into their daily lives has made remarkable improvements to their quality of life.

Concluding Remarks

Is Prop 22 perfect? No. But is it a positive step forward in a critical discussion to evaluate the future of work and how we can continue to provide protections for workers, especially with the rise of automation? Yes. People are conflating Yes on Prop 22 as being purely positive for companies like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and Instacart and that they only support the measure for fear of having to shut down operations. Again, the likelihood of that happening is slim — as explained previously, prices will just increase. Service will be more limited. People that can afford the services will continue to pay for the safety and convenience at a premium.

If these services were soley operating in their own self-interest as No on Prop 22 proponents claim, Prop 22 would be written in an aggressive way to keep operations as they were in a pre-AB 5 world. Or, these companies would fight for a winner-takes-all market instead of coming together to truly provide thought leadership in how companies at the forefront of innovation can push for policy progress. We know government and policy continuously are lagging behind the pace of technological innovation. Prop 22 is laying the foundation to gradually rethink our historical and outdated worker protection theories, instead finding a balance to both provide the current community of independent contractors stability while opening a forum to create even more protections in the future. Yet instead of a jarring 180, being deliberate and thoughtful about what other downstream impacts maybe.

I only touched on a few of the many reasons to support a Yes vote on Prop 22. My hope is that instead of getting caught up in the highly polarized environment, you can see the olive branch and well-meaning proposal that Prop 22 is before rejecting it on face as an “evil corporation” play. I think if you evaluate it fully, think about the ensuing and long-lasting ramifications outside of the app-based community, and truly take time to empathize with the experiences of the majority of drivers, you’ll understand why voting Yes on Prop 22 is just good policymaking.